1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to data communications, and more specifically to data recovery for serial digital data link.
2. Description of the Related Art
A number of digital data recovery systems are based on a sampling recovery method that uses sampled data to control the data sampling time. For example, Rau discloses a method for serial non-return-to-zero (NRZ) data transmission. See Rau et al., “Clock/Data Recovery PLL Using Half-Frequency Clock,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, pp. 1156-1160, No. 7, July 1997. Rau includes a general feature of phase-locked loops (PLLs) that includes a phase detector, a loop filter, and a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO). The structures and operations of the loop filter and the VCO are the same as generally known to those skilled in the field. But, an unusual feature of the design is the phase detector, which uses a delay-locked loop (DLL) to generate multiple sampling clocks. The VCO can run at a clock rate lower than the data rate, specifically at half the data rate.
The PLL adjusts the clock to an incoming data stream. Because of the random nature of data, data transition does not necessarily occur at every clock cycle. The loop must handle a sequence of consecutive zeros or ones in the data stream. In general, for good loop performance, the control signal should be proportional to the phase error. However, at very high operating frequencies, analog signals depend on the data pattern and become highly nonlinear because they do not settle during the bit duration. On the other hand, clock recovery schemes based on sampling techniques result in uniform digital control pulses.
The data stream is sampled twice within a bit time (the time between received bits). The first of the sampled data are the recovered data, forming the output stream at the original data rate. The second sampled data, which are sampled at half of the bit time later than the first, are used for phase decision. If data transition occurs, and the second sampled data equal the first, it indicates that the sampling phase is early. The frequency of the VCO is then lowered and the sampling phase is delayed. On the contrary, if data transition occurs, and the second sampled data are not equal to the first, it indicates that the sampling phase is late. The frequency of the VCO is then raised and the sampling phase is advanced. If there is no data transition, the phase detector operates so that there is no control on the sampling phase. The stable operating point of the sampling loop is reached when the second sampling is done exactly at the data transition. This so-called bang-bang operation can make the clock jitter smaller than the one introduced by data dependent and nonlinear analog pulses at high frequencies.
Poulton discloses a similar data recovery scheme. See Poulton et al., “A Tracking Clock Recovery Receiver for 4 Gbps Signaling,” IEEE Micro, pp. 25-26, January-February 1998. The system is aimed at a higher data rate and uses a demultiplexing receiver to recover high frequency data with a lower frequency clock. The clock rate is one tenth of the data rate. Therefore, the receiver produces 20 samples of the incoming bit stream. Half of the samples are used to output the recovered data stream, while the remaining half are used for phase control as in Rau. Up and Down signals are generated for each of the 10 sample pairs, and the results are summed by an analog summer to generate a differential analog phase control voltage pair. This operation is performed using a switched capacitor filter summer. In this system, the sampling phase is generated by a phase shifter and a delay-locked loop (DLL). The Up/Down signals control the bias voltage of the phase interpolator in the phase shifter and make the phase of the phase shifter output either advanced or delayed. The 20 phase clocks are generated as the outputs of the consecutive delay stage in the DLL.
The above-described systems are tracking receivers. They control sampling instants by using twice oversampled data. They find the transition edge of an input data stream using the bang-bang operation, and sample the valid data at the position that is half of the bit time distance from the transition edge. If the received data stream has no jitter and is not distorted by the channel, the sampling phase is not critical to the receiver performance. If the received data stream has a small jitter but is not distorted by the channel, the sampling phase may be deviated from the center of the data eye without any performance degradation. But if the received data stream has a jitter comparable to a bit time or is heavily distorted by the channel, the sampling phase deviation from the eye center has a great impact on the performance such as a bit-error-rate (BER). Furthermore, if the jitter is not distributed symmetrically around the transition center, the eye center cannot be correctly tracked by the above two methods.